etty Coddington of East Boston wasn't much interested in the inner workings of government until the night two years ago when she woke up to the sound of bullets smashing through a window on the first floor of her house.
Since then, her dislike of guns has blossomed into advocacy of an outright ban, and yesterday Coddington, 72, was ready to talk policy. She, along with 25 mostly older East Boston residents, gathered around presidential hopeful Bill Bradley to discuss gun control - an issue Bradley is counting on to win over people like her in neighborhoods like Eastie.
As he laid out a wish list of gun control measures stricter than any other candidate's, Bradley cited this year's rash of random shootings and asserted that the measures he backs could have headed some of them off. Yesterday, he called for a stringent agenda that included a requirement that all guns be registered with the government, much like automobiles, and a ban on cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials.
He also recommended background checks at gun shows to weed out people with a history of mental illness. The checks he recommends, he said, could have kept weapons out of the hands of Buford Furrow, who is charged with wounding five people last week at a California community center and then killing a postal worker.
''This is by far the strongest call for gun control I've seen from any candidate,'' said Jerry Belair of the Newton-based advocacy group Stop Handgun Violence. And after this year's series of random shootings, people who had been neutral on gun control are uniquely receptive to the idea of controlling access to guns, he said.
''They're changing their minds this year,'' Blair added.
Vice President Al Gore has also staked out a strong position on gun control, calling for states to issue photo licenses to people who buy handguns and for dealers to report the serial numbers of every handgun they sell, which would facilitate tracing guns used in crimes.
But his plan stops short of Bradley's proposal that all guns be registered with the government. Bradley has also proposed that the crime of selling a gun to a middleman who then sells it to a minor should be upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony, a position Gore has not taken.
And a month after GOP frontrunner George W. Bush passed legislation in Texas blocking communities from suing gun manufacturers, Bradley encouraged the proliferating number of lawsuits, saying they put the gun industry ''exactly where big tobacco was eight or 10 years ago.'' In June, Boston became the 20th community to file for damages from gun manufacturers on the basis of health care costs and lowered property values owing to gun violence.
''That's ultimately what happened with the tobacco lobby,'' Bradley said. Frustrated by the pace of legislative action, tobacco opponents ''chose instead to go to the courts.''
Although most in the East Boston crowd said they hadn't settled on a candidate at this early point in the campaign, Bradley's focus on guns struck a chord even with some who professed an aversion to politics.
''I don't like guns. Everything about them, I don't like,'' said Coddington. ''I think all guns should be banned.''
Others in the crowd, like Eva Marie DiMaggio of the Chelsea Street Neighborhood Crime Watch who has a 17-year-old son, were longtime gun opponents.
''I thought I was going to be worried about drunk driving or drug use or him getting a girl pregnant,'' DiMaggio said. ''Now I'm worried about him confronting someone who has a gun.''
